Decided to replay PCB to test the Prismriver thing. No lives lost before their boss fight, which is quite impressive, since PCB Stage 4 is surpassed only by MoF and IN in annoyingness. I did end up using up half of my bombs and a bunch of cherry borders, but I got there. And then remembered why I HATE the Prismrivers:
Their first attack[Not even a spellcard] has curvy lasers. I used up two bombs on that stupid thing. Then I went and harassed the violin Sister, since I had vague memories of the trumpet one's spell card being nigh-impossible. I still bombed through the stringy spellcard, but in retrospect, I don't think I really needed to. The final couple prism attacks, despite being their easiest ones, inflicted death upon me for the first time while they were exploding.
Stage 5 started off nicely, up until Youmu showed up. Then I promptly ran into her non-spell and had to bomb through her slashity thing, even though I remembered that it was one of her least deadly ones. Rest of the stage was no problem, but Youmu was another matter. I died to her non-spell[The same one as before, even] and mostly just took knives to a sword fight for her spell cards. Wasn't perfect, but got the job done. Stage 6 Youmu killed me again, with the EXACT SAME ATTACK that had killed me twice before. The worst part is that I remembered being really good at it back when I was trying to beat this game. Had to bomb her last spellcard, but still broke even because of the bomb she drops.
And then on to Yuyuko. I got a terrible start, dying THREE times to her very first attack. After that, things got a bit better. My baseline for her attacks, spell card or not, was one bomb. This was still sustainable because I would often die before using all four bombs and get a refill. Her only attack that I dodged perfectly was her final non-spell, which is so pathetic that I could have timed it out without focusing. Her last few attacks weren't too bad. The annoying one that boxes you in the corner got reset with a knife bomb and was then easy. Her flower chaos attack thingy I did quite well on, only bombing once. And then her Butterfly Suplex was basically a free win since I had two lives[And thus 8 bombs] left. All in all, I finished with one life and two bombs, much better then the skin-of-my-teeth victory I'd had previously.
Honestly, I'd forgotten just how broken SakuyaA is. She gets four medium strength bombs and shots that can either sweep the screen clear of stage enemies or all home in on a boss while having fairly balanced speed. I'd say she's easily the most powerful shot type in the series and, once bombs/specials are factoured in, the third best overall character. Still can't approach the Border Team from IN[Homing strong shots, strong bombs guaranteed to be deathbombs] or Marisa/Nitori from SA[Solid forward shots, incredibly safe bombs that are never wasted], but she still eclipses the rest of the PCB cast.
Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom